rime than towards the close of his life.

Even in Plato's later works there is, in spite of their conservative
attitude, a very peculiar reservation in regard to the anthropomorphic
gods of popular belief. It shows itself in the _Laws_ in the fact that
where he sets out to _prove_ the existence of the gods he contents himself
with proving the divinity of the heavenly bodies and quite disregards the
other gods. It appears still more plainly in the _Timaeus_, where he gives
a philosophical explanation of how the divine heavenly bodies came into
existence, but says expressly of the other gods that such an explanation
is impossible, and that we must abide by what the old theologians said on
this subject; they being partly the children of gods would know best where
their parents came from. It is observations of this kind that induced
Zeller to believe that Plato altogether denied the gods of popular belief;
he also contends that the gods have no place in Plato's system. This
latter contention is perfectly correct; Plato never identified the gods
with the ideas (although he comes very near to it in the _Republic_, where
he attributes to them immutability, the quality which determines the
essence of the ideas), and in the _Timaeus_ he distinguishes sharply
between them. No doubt his doctrine of ideas led up to a kind of divinity,
the idea of the good, as the crown of the system, but the direct inference
from this conception would be pure monotheism and so exclude polytheism.
This inference Plato did not draw, though his treatment of the gods in the
_Laws_ and _Timaeus_ certainly shows that he was quite clear that the gods
of the popular faith were an irrational element in his conception of the
universe. The two passages do not entitle us to go further and conclude
that he utterly rejected them, and in the _Timaeus_, where Plato makes
both classes of gods, both the heavenly bodies and the others, take part
in the creation of man, this is plainly precluded. The playful turn with
which he evades inquiry into the origin of the gods thus receives its
proper limitation; it is entirely confined to their origin.

Such, according to my view, is the state of the case. It is of fundamental
importance to emphasise the fact that we cannot conclude, because the gods
of popular belief do not fit into the system of a philosopher, that he
denies their existence. In what follows we shall have occasion to point
out a case in which, as all are now